An example of a “less worse” option:
Fifty days.
Fifty days is the minimum amount of time it takes to become a Regular, and the maximum time that a Regular can be away without losing their status.
Fifty days would have given us enough time to save our memories, pack our shit, get used to the idea, and finally, say goodbye to the Lounge.
Time to get closure.
Time to figure out how each of us fit into the community without the Lounge.
Time to say “farewell” to those who didn’t want to stay.
Time to set up a new community, if that was how some Regulars chose to cope.
Fifty days. Just a hair over seven weeks. In which no new people would be granted Regular status, but those who lost it could still lose it.
The Lounge has existed for four years. There’s no reason that either of those issues needed it to be closed, literally, overnight.
Every #boing post has a counter on it:. “This topic will close in five days.”. It’s a humane way to say, “Hey. This topic is going away. Get your comments in before it closes.”
Would it really have been so hard to set the Lounge to close in fifty?
ETA: And if “Hey, Rube” and “Kvetching about the usual trolls” really were an immediate problem, they could have been locked immediately, with the rest of the #Lounge set to close organically. Again, coming up with “less worse” options to the issues listed doesn’t seem so hard.
